The time for my second half marathon! I'm proud of my sub-two hour time too. Quite an accomplishment! I trained for this one a little differently than I did the first one. I was already at the 5-6 mile mark when we started (as opposed to running barely 3 miles when I started training for the first one). My partner and I started training in January and the race was the end of March. We had a plan to run 2-3 times a week (around 4-5 miles at a time) and have a long run on Saturday. Each Saturday we increased our long run by 1 mile. We had so much time to prepare that we ended up running two 10 mile runs, tw0 11 mile runs and two 12 mile runs the last 6-7 weeks before the race. That's a lot of mileage when you add 4-6 mile weekly runs 2-3 times a week!
About half way through our training, we kind of half joked about being able to do it in under 2 hours (which is a little less than 9:10 minute miles). As we got closer and closer to the race, my partner thought that was a little unrealistic (most of our long runs were not averaging that pace) and we adjusted the goal to 2:03 (about 9:20 second miles). I'll be honest, going into the race, I was a little disappointed that we adjusted the time, but we were committed to staying together and I was ok with it. Heck, it was shaving over 4 minutes from my previous half marathon. At the end of the day, improving my time was really all that mattered to me.
Race day we were nervous but excited and I felt well trained. The course was supposedly relatively flat (we had never run it before) and we expected a good race. The first 7 miles or so, we ran pretty fast. Faster than our 9:20 expectation. I was supposed to be keeping pace and if we were going to fast, I was supposed to pace us back. Several times I did pace us back, but we were feeling so good we just kind of went with it. I think the first 7 miles were averaging a little under 9 minute miles. Then we hit mile 8 and I could tell my partner was starting to have some difficulties. We slowed up a little bit hoping for her to "recover" for a minute or two. We weren't going to stop and walk because no matter what, neither one of us wanted to walk. At about 8.5 miles, there was a big hill (it was relatively short, but very steep) and I started to run a little ahead of my partner. At the top of the hill, I looked back and she had stopped to walk a little bit. At that point, I wasn't sure what to do. I wasn't sure if I had pushed her too much the first 7 miles and she was going to have trouble the rest of the way or if she was just needing a little break. At that point, I made the decision to go on. As I did that, the course double backed and I had a chance to yell back at her to see how she was doing. All I remember her saying was, "keep going, I'm right behind you!" And so I went.
I felt really good through mile 9 and even 10 but then I could feel fatigue setting in. Not to mention, the second half of the course seemed to be uphill (at a slight incline). Mile 11 was kind of a blur, but it was the first time I realized that I could probably beat the 2 hour mark. I knew it was going to be close, but if I kept the pace I was going, I could probably do it. Then mile 12 came and I thought that was going to be it for me. I have never felt bad while running. Sure I felt fatigued from time to time on prior runs, but never bad. Well, this mile 12 was bad. I mean really bad. I thought I was going to be sick bad. But I pushed through and as I rounded to mile 13, I passed one of the girls I had trained with (there were 6 of us training together for various half marathons) and I heard her say, "you're going to do it! You're going to beat two hours!". I don't remember much for that last 1/10, but I remember crossing that finish line, stopping my watch and looking down and seeing 1:58:37 :)
Me and my adoring fans. I saw them at several points throughout the race and it was what kept me going :)
